


The Road Not Taken

by anonymouse64



Category: RWBY
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Feels, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-28
Updated: 2017-03-28
Packaged: 2018-10-12 03:39:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10481265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonymouse64/pseuds/anonymouse64
Summary: Snip from the PoV of Raven Branwen, starting about a year after she abandoned her family in team STRQ.





	

The bird awkwardly squirmed in through the half-open window, and flew inside with a flutter of black wings.

It perched on the edge of the cot, cocking its head to peer down at the tiny occupant within with one glistening black eye.

The infant, wrapped in a fuzzy blanket, continued to slumber, tiny face slack in sleep. There was a pause, then the bird dropped down next to the baby, still watching it closely.

A faint _quork_ buzzed in the back of the raven’s throat, and then it hopped closer to fiddle with the baby’s soft yellow hair; plucking and pulling on the strands slightly as it moved them out of the infant’s face.

Then the door to the tiny nursery opened.

“Yang sweetie, it’s time for yo-“

Startled, the bird took off with an almighty flap of its wings, slammed into the window with a _BANG_ that woke the baby, and recoiled back into the room to nearly crash into the red-haired woman who had just entered.

Space and biology gave a _twist_ , and a young woman landed on the balls of her feet in the middle of the room, eyes wide with shock and black hair tangled in ringlets around her face.

Crimson eyes met silver, and for a moment all was silent. Even the baby didn’t cry.

“Raven…” the silver-eyed woman said at last, voice filled with disbelief.

“Hey Summer,” said Raven Branwen, trying to force a levity she didn’t feel into her voice. “Long time no see.”

*

Sometime later found Raven sitting on the sofa in the main room. She was fidgeting in place, feet tapping out a furious rhythm on the carpeted floor as she looked around the room. It was much the same as when she had last seen it; very cozy, comfortable, with all kinds of little nick-knacks and curios lying around.

The sheer domestic mundanity of it made her want to scream. To rage, to rip her hair out at the roots and turn the place into a hellstorm of feathers and talons just so it wouldn’t be so _boring._

Summer pushed the door open and moved back into the living room, buttoning up the front of her blouse as she came in. Raven stared at her, having a pretty good idea of what the implications were but not sure if she could accept them.

Then her eyes drifted down to Summer’s belly, where her bump was just starting to show.

“OH MY GOD!” Raven fairly shrieked, bounding up with glee and wrapping her arms around Summer’s shoulders, squeezing her tight. “Holy shit, Summer, I don’t believe it!”

For a moment, it was like nothing had ever changed.

Raven pulled back, eyes shining. “What are you gonna call it?”

“Uh, well,” Summer stammered, “if it’s a girl we were going to name it after my mother, if it’s a boy we were going to name it after your great-uncle.”

“ _Wait,_ ” Raven’s eyes were wide. “ _Qrow_ knocked you up!?”

“Oh, no,” Summer said quickly, “no, it’s Taiyang’s.” She awkwardly held out her hand so Raven could see the ring there. “We’re married now.”

“Oh.” Raven’s demeanor changed immediately, like a shutter had been slammed closed. “Oh, well, I suppose that’s for the best, then. At least there’s someone who-“

Summer hit her. Not a dainty slap like in the movies, this was a right hook that Summer put her whole weight behind and that crashed against Raven’s cheek hard enough to knock her onto her backside.

“Why did you leave?” Summer said, glaring down at Raven as she shook her hand out.

“ _You know why,_ ” Raven hissed, holding her throbbing face and leaning on the coffee table as she pulled herself up.

**“ _Say it.”_**

“Because this isn’t _me_ , Summer!” Raven threw her arms out, trying to encompass the entire house in one gesture. “A cottage, and books, and pets an-an-and _that!”_ She pointed at the teapot on the table, still in its teddy-bear shaped cozy. “It’s not what I am. You _know_ that.”

“No,” said Summer, in tones that could blister paint, “no, your thing was always dancing naked in the moonlight, wasn’t it?”

Raven gave a sour smile. “You enjoyed it at the time, as I recall.”

“Yeah, I did.” Summer folded her arms across her chest. “But that was years ago. I’ve changed.”

“Oh yes you have,” Raven sneered, “you’ve become a perfect little housewife for Taiyang and Qrow. Tell me, do they share you, or do you just- _ack_ ”

Summer’s hand was tight around Raven’s throat, cutting off both her air and the bile issuing forth. The smaller woman’s eyes shone like sunlamps, so bright it hurt for Raven to look her in them, as Summer’s lips peeled back from her teeth in a grimace of feral rage.

“That’s-my-girl…” Raven choked, managing to smile.

Summer threw her across the room, Raven twisting into the black bird still in mid-air and bursting through the kitchen window in a cloud of feathers.

Summer stared after her, panting furiously through her teeth as she struggled with the urge to chase after Raven, to smash her down to the ground and drag her back by her hair to _answer for all the pain she had put them through…_

Then she heard baby Yang crying from somewhere back in the house, and the rage evaporated. Summer sighed, then turned away from the broken window and went back into the nursery room.

***

It was hard to measure the passage of time when she was squeezed into the bird’s form, Raven had found. Though she was closer to her human faculties than Qrow could ever be, even the body of her animal self had limits. She was flying through the forest-one of Vale’s she was sure- listening to the trees creaking around her, and the air rushing through her feathers.

It was cold now, snow heaped on the bare branches of the trees and covering the frozen mulch of their rotting leaves on the ground.

Grimm prowled through this forest, of course, but most of them barely spared her a glance, their tiny minds unable to recognize her as a foe.

There seemed like a lot of them around here, Raven noticed. More than usual.

Then her beady black eye saw something that nearly made the bird’s tiny heart stop.

A ragged white cape, with a red lining, caught on a branch and flapping in the wind.

_Oh no._

It was the work of a moment to follow the tracks in the snow, the smeared blood, the splintered tree-trunks and mangled carcasses of rotting Grimm. Wings pumped against the air, speeding her onwards.

_Please, no._

Raven almost missed the supine shape on the edge of the clearing, and had to loop back around. She transformed in mid-air, landing with a heavy _thud_ that set her charms and bangles jumping.

The howl she made when she found the tears already frozen on Summer Rose’s cold cheeks shook the snow off the branches and sent the nesting birds racing skywards as one.

Raven cradled her friend, trying to find any indication that she might still be alive, that she might not be too late…

There was none, and Raven started to sob, tears steaming in the frigid air.

“Why her?” She whimpered aloud. “She was good, a-and _kind,_ and she never hurt _anyone!”_

Raven looked down into the glazed silver eyes, and at the shattered moon reflected in them.

 _It should’ve been me._ She thought, despairingly. _I’m the one who hurt everyone so much, **I** deserve this, not her!_

_Oh god I’ve fucked everything up._

Her whole body shaking with her muted crying, Raven hugged Summer to her chest, feeling the cold, slimy blood on the dead woman’s chest soaking through her clothing.

She looked up, through eyes filled with tears, at the moon again. The one thing that had always been with her, and which had been with her pagan fathers too.

 _Make me a wolf,_ she thought, thoughts turning dark. _Make me a wolf so I can avenge her._

She laid Summer down, tears drying up, and gently closed her eyes before folding the dead woman’s hands across her chest. Raven’s own hands came away glistening with Summer’s blood, and she stared at them for a moment. Her fathers in the tribe had always said that the spirits of the forest were best summoned with fresh blood.

Raven closed her hand into a fist, digging her nails into her palm until her own blood welled up to mix with the cold blood already there.

_Make me a wolf now._

The wind moaning through the trees was her only answer.

***

It seemed a very long time before Raven returned again to the cottage on Patch. The snow had melted, that she could tell, and the Sun was starting to rise higher in the sky each day. She alighted on a tree, watching through the bird’s eyes as Taiyang meandered around the outside of the house, seemingly looking for something. His beard had grown in thick, and his eyes, eyes that Raven remembered as shining like gems for her, were dull.

The one man in all her life who had ever loved her for what she was, and she had torn his heart out.

 _Qrow was right,_ the bird thought. _I never **did** deserve you._

_I never deserved any of you._

Raven watched her former husband disappear back inside the house, then was unable to conceal a flinch as the door slammed shut.

For some time, she lingered, letting the wind blow her from side to side on her perch, and feeling the warm sun on her feathers.

Then she saw something moving in the grass, just at the bottom of the steps that lead off the patio.

At first, Raven wasn’t sure what it was she had seen. Then the tiny wiggling shape sat back, and Raven was shocked by how familiar the infant looked.

_Summer?_

No, no, it couldn’t be. It must be her child, that was right.

In spite of herself, Raven took wing, gliding down towards where the baby sat, amusing itself by pulling up handfuls of the grass and letting it blow away on the breeze.

_God, she looks so much like her._

The giggling baby was distracted by the large, black bird as it came to rest close by, peering at her intently with a liquid black eye.

_She said she’d name you after her mother, so…_

_Ruby?_

Raven bobbed her head, trying to get the bird’s voicebox to cooperate. She knew she could do this, she’d done it before to play pranks on people.

“Ru…bee,” she managed. The baby giggled again, clapping her pudgy hands together, and Raven felt a strange, almost alien feeling of delight glow in her breast.

“Ruby,” Raven said again, bobbing her head. The baby laughed again, reaching out for Raven with her tiny hands. Raven hopped out of the way with an amused _quork_ , staying just far enough away from the grasping infant to coax her onwards.

The two wandered in circles around the garden, little Ruby crawling on her belly after Raven, who always stayed just far enough away to lead the little one onwards, occasionally taking flight and doing mock strafing-runs on the baby until she was rolling around kicking her little legs in the air as she laughed.

 _This is what you could’ve been,_ said a tiny voice inside Raven. _Is it really so bad?_

Raven paused, struck by this sudden thought. The baby seemed to sense her playmate’s doubt as well, and halted, confused.

“Ruby!” The yell surprised both of them, and Raven took flight instinctively, downdrafts ruffling the baby’s reddish hair as she flapped back a distance.

The yellow-haired toddler dashed down from the house, heedless of Raven, and scooped the baby up into her arms.

“Daddy’s been getting really worried about you,” said the child crossly, holding the infant tight to her chest. “Now come on, uncle Qrow says its time for your bottle.”

Raven watched from out of the tree as Yang carried Ruby back into the house, feeling grief and pride mingling within her.

 _You’d be a better mother than I could ever be, Yang._  

She took to the air and flew away, promising herself she wouldn’t look back.


End file.
